[Info-vax] Licenses on VAX/VMS 4.0/4.1 source code listing scans

[Phillip Helbig undress to reply]

In article <sovmt3$lmo$1 at dont-email.me>, Simon Clubley
<clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes: 

> The software situation is very clear - you can't redistribute it
> except under the terms of the licence it was sold to you under,
> which for normal commercial software means you can't redistribute
> at all.
> 
> However, does the same apply to normal old-style paper documentation ?
> 
> Is normal documentation sold under a licence which says you can't
> make a copy of it and then pass on the copy to someone else ?
> 
> I'm talking about normal documentation here, not documentation
> supplied to you under a NDA or similar construct (for example,
> the specification for a restricted protocol).
> 
> I don't remember ever having to sign a contract that says as such
> for normal old-style paper documentation so I don't know if such
> restrictions are implicit under normal copyright law or whether
> the restrictions simply don't exist.

Almost all books and so on have something like "All rights reserved.  No 
portion of this document may be reproduced in any form without prior 
written permission from the publisher."

There are exceptions for quoting short portions for criticism, fair use, 
and so on.